


The Universe is Watching

by hexnhart



Series: Going AWOL, Staying Sane [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Post-TLJ, Spoilers, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Suspense, The Force, defector!Hux, questioning loyalty, split POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 13:01:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13077411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hexnhart/pseuds/hexnhart
Summary: This is one of the days you will get asked about later, “where have you been when you heard the news that day?” and you will remember your exact location and the colour of the mug you were sipping caf from.*Armitage Hux and Rey meet in neutral space as representatives of the First Order and the Resistance to discuss the way forward.





	The Universe is Watching

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hollycomb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hollycomb/gifts).



This is one of the days you will get asked about later, “where have you been when you heard the news that day?” and you will remember your exact location and the colour of the mug you were sipping caf from.

“A meeting of the ages!” a voice booms from the holo as the camera zooms in on an unpresupposing space station, “Join me, Sif Marsham, on the neutral orbiting station of Xermitsk, for a broadcast that will define the Galaxy as we know it. After the setbacks suffered by both the First Order and the Resistance, the two parties’ figureheads meet in what could be the beginning of a peace treaty or the open declaration of war! The decision lies with General Hux and Rey the Jedi!”

The same names are typed onto little tags attached to their lapels.

“I’m not a Jedi,” Rey grumbles just as Hux hisses under his breath, “It’s Grand Admiral Armitage Hux, morons.”

She shoots him a look. They are standing shoulder to shoulder in the wings of some kind of concert hall: sweeping ceilings, an elevated stage and an abandoned string of tinsel fluttering on the wall. Rows of seats are taken up by filming equipment and recorder-droids – that was one of the terms of the meeting, that there are no other organics in the room.

“We’re good to go,” an aide shuffles Rey behind the stage to the other entrance, “It looks better if you enter from opposite sides.”

Rey’s palms are sweaty under her fingerless gloves, and she flexes them to relieve the tension.

“I’ll cue you in,” the aide presses a manicured finger to her earpiece, “A-and, ready, go.”

Rey steps into the dazzling light of the podium and the clicking of camera shutters. Opposite her, Hux does the same. They reach a pair of squat armchairs half-turned towards each other and sit. The room goes quiet, apart from the soft whirring of the droids, and Rey feels that the silence radiates through parsecs of space to penetrate every household and cantina in the known Galaxy.

“I expected Captain Dameron,” Hux says. His voice is pleasantly accented and hoarse, probably from all the shouting.

“I volunteered,” Rey answers, though it certainly lacks a volunteer’s enthusiasm.

Hux just tilts his head, “So you’re called Rey. Unless you prefer another mode of address.”

“Just Rey. There aren’t many option with that name.”

Did that sound like a personal dig? Rey takes a steadying breath. What is she even doing here? One girl against the spearhead of the Galaxy’s most ruthless killing machine.

“I didn’t know,” there’s something unexpectedly soft in that statement.

“Don’t I get… erm, discussed a lot in the Order?”

“Yes, but… not by name,” Hux remembers standing in the Supreme Leader’s (former Supreme Leader’s) flaming chambers, listening to Ren. ‘The girl killed Snoke and escaped.’ The girl – well, she is that – her eyes are bright with a kind of vengeful hope, a kindness born in adversity.

“Your name gets mentioned quite a lot in the Resistance,” she observes, “Armitage.”

Would being on first name basis act as an equaliser? It’s not like she can give him anything but ‘Rey’ and she’ll be damned before she calls him ‘General’ or whatever his actual rank is.

Rey reaches out into the room, sweeping through it for emotional turmoil; not into Hux’s head, she’ll never do that, just around, for any emanations that the man might let slip. The Force is unchanged: he does not mind the name.

What does one say next? ‘Pleased to meet you’? But she is not, and he will easily catch her on the lie.

“Captain Dameron… Poe could not make it because of Resistance regrouping. We are stretched very thin, you know,” a little too much bite, she’s worried for her friends.

“So are we. The loss of life was roughly equal on both sides.”

Suddenly all her bite and resentment are justified.

“You… you _destroyed_ five planets!” Rey sputters.

Hux watches her, along with the rest of the Galaxy, “Yes. I suppose I did.”

He is challenging her to something, though Rey cannot quite parse what. The whirring of the droids has faded to background noise, she is fully focused on her interlocutor now, like they are two magnetic poles repelled but inescapably bound in this room, this conversation.

“How does that make you feel?”

The question throws Rey off kilter. In the space between two breaths she asks herself the question. Until this year, she did not even know that those five planets existed, she still struggles remembering the names, there were no friends or relative of hers as far as she can sense, so, she can wax lyrical about how wrong it is on a moral level, but she does not feel much.

It must show on her face, because Hux gives her a nod as if to say ‘See, I told you so.’

“I do not think anyone can comprehend what has happened, least of all the people who were instrumental in the act,” he is careful with his words, still waiting for something from her, “Maybe that is the case with all murder, no matter how big or small.”

Rey killed somebody, a red-armoured guard, and maybe some Stormtrooper, maybe more than one. It was never talked about: all is fair in love and war. Maybe one of those Stormtroopers was like Finn, maybe she is no different from this tired man sitting in front of her.

“It does not excuse the action,” Rey says, holding eye contact, “Not for any of us.”

It feels like she is seeing Hux for the first time, or that she has only now taken the time to look at the man beyond the title. He has an atrocious regulation haircut, smoothed down with too much hair gel, and tired shadows under his eyes. His uniform is a bit creased and there is a piece of lint clinging to the elbow. And he has a sensuous mouth, bright from dehydration like it has been painted with lipstick, which is funny in Rey’s head.

The observation eases her, and Rey twists round to look into the wings, “Erm… can we have something to drink?”

If Hux is surprised, he does not show it, and in a minute, there is a tray of intricate tea things on the low table between their chairs.

“Courtesy of the Xermitsk Station, rock-sage tea, the preferred drink of the Utai, whose planet we are orbiting,” the aide nods to the camera and disappears off-stage.

The tea-things are shaped like various kinds of fruit, utterly strange to Rey. She grabs the largest vessel and tilts it over a teacup. Nothing happens.

“There’s a button on the handle,” Hux prompts.

Rey presses it and a gush of black liquid sloshes over the cup, making her wince.

“Allow me,” Hux takes the teapot from her, its ceramic side squeaking against the leather of his gloves, and puts it to the side. He then performs an elaborate series of actions involving dribbling a clear liquid into the bottom of the cups, stirring it with a toothpick or straw, that makes it change colour to mauve, and finally pouring a little bit of the black tea, which goes iridescent blue upon touching the bottom of the cups.

“You are surprised an officer of the First Order would know something like the Utai tea-ceremony. It is often performed during official meetings. And we do not stop being people when we join the Order, whatever it would like you to think. I happen to rather like collecting tea.”

Is the admission genuine or a carefully constructed ploy to get her to see him as a simple cog in the system, not the murderer he is? Rey wants to believe that this is Armitage speaking, not General Hux. And has she not been doing the same, trying to get him to trust her with her honest face and kindness when she asked for this tea.

Struggling with that dilemma, Rey takes the cup and gulps the hot liquid without thinking. She is not accustomed to pay attention to what she eats or drinks. Then it strikes her, “Did you poison it?”

The thought is so immediate that she blurts it aloud, and regrets it even before she finishes speaking. Hux’s hand pauses over his own cup.

For a teetering moment, Rey thinks he might leave, and then Hux starts laughing. It is a subdued, quiet sound, but it resonates through the Force like ripples in a pond.

“Rey, I think you have rather more reasons to poison me than the other way around,” the first time he uses her name, and it is warm.

“I wouldn’t!” she retorts. Would she? If she had a chance to rid the world of this man who is a poster-boy for unadulterated evil, would she?

His laughter has cracked something open between them, or maybe built a matchstick bridge. Rey composes herself by taking another sip of the tart liquid in her cup.

“That is not why I came here. I wanted to see you…” Hux hums something, but she does not pause, “as a human being, not as this role the First Order needed filling.”

We chose our enemies and renounced the ability to choose our friends, and both our camps were trying to build a better world, not seeing that the world is already here and creating a better one would mean destroying the one here, now.”

Deep down, Rey did not think she would say it entering the room, she expected to be overpowered by the red haze of hatred towards a man who stands for a system of abuse, torture and mindless slaughter. But seeing him with that exhausted look, lacking his regulation hat – and what a silly hat it was. Acknowledging that propels Rey into the next part of her speech.

“We should not be trying to build a better world. There is already so much good stuff in the Galaxy,” Rey thinks about seeing a forest for the first time, and the wide expanse of the sea, “we will protect it and make sure it does not disappear. So here is my proposal to you: join the Resistance.”

Hux stares at her, the closest to aghast he allows his expression to become, “And how do you propose I go about this?”

“When you return to your ship – they’ll probably all know anyway by that time – tell your crew that whoever wants to follow you can do so. They will stay under your command, and you can keep the ship, but you will be answering to the Resistance command.”

“And what if they decide to make me a shooting target?”

“I will go with you and make sure that does not happen,” she is absolutely serious, he can see it in the little crease between her brows.

“Using the Force?” now that’s an uncomfortable thought, his throat is still sore from the last time that power was invoked, “There is one who might outmatch you in ability.”

Rey shrugs, as if to say that they will cross that bridge when they get to it.

“A man who defected once can do it again.”

“Yes.”

“And you will be left forever wondering whether my decision is genuine, whether you can trust me not to slit your friends’ throats in their sleep.”

“Yes.”

This is the most inane, impractical, ridiculous plan Hux has ever heard (apart from everything that comes out of Ren’s mouth; that’s on a scale of its own). And yet…

The Galaxy holds its breath, a tension Rey can feel through the wire-tight thrum of the Force. They think this moment will decide everything, and so it will, on their belief alone. Maybe that is what she really came here for: to make sure people believed. Or because she was proving to herself that she was not like General Hux, and found Armitage to be very much like her instead.

He is not looking at Rey now, head tilted away from the cameras so that a sliver of skin shows above his stiff collar. Rey guesses the hint of a bruise, recognises the pattern. Genuine distress or crafted ploy? She really will always keep doubting, but…

By the time Hux realises she’s got him, it is too late. His throat is suddenly dry and there is no tea left, and she trusts him. The cameras zero in on them, like they are the only living beings in the universe, and she trusts him. Nobody else did: Snoke used him, his subordinates feared him, Ren constantly fought him for dominance, his parents offered him some sort of grudging recognition, but no more. And Rey trusts him, not because she is a saint or a martyr, but because she chose to.

She knows his decision without Hux needing to speak, a corner of her mouth quirking up, but they still have to go through it for the benefit of their audience, “Rey, I agree to defect from the First Order, to offer that same opportunity to those serving under my command, and to devote all future efforts to the goals of the Resistance.”

And the New Republic,” he adds, just in case.

Hux stands and offers Rey his hand, gloveless, with the raw marks from his nails carved into it. Rey gets up as well and shakes it; her hand is cool. They linger there for the camera shots, while questions wiz in Hux’s mind. How did she know to target the one thing he always craved? How did it happen that he felt her equal? And a dozen more that have Hux ready to believe in the providence of the Force.

“I’ll go to the ship with you,” Rey lets go of his hand, sidestepping towards the exit from the stage, “Just need to grab my lightsabre. And thank people for the tea.”

Hux lingers for a moment, facing the cameras, the droids and the Galaxy behind them, wide-eyed. Will this footage be compared with his speech on Starkiller? Yes.

What changed?

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Liked it? Come to tumblr to scream with me about Star Wars, Black Sails, and other fandom stuff: I'm hex-n-hart


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